I have enjoyed Abbott’s other books, but this one just didn’t make the grade. The story was basically told in the first 20% of the book. And, at that, the details were about Remus’s abusive personality not in the chase and investigation of him by Willebrandt. Disappointing.

This would have made a solid feature-length article, but as a book, there' just isn't enough meat. Abbott tries to tell a story about t he business and professional lives of the figures involved in the case of Prohibition-era liquor magnate George Remus, but never quite manages to bring everything together in a coherent tale. Her dips in and out of prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrand's personal life aren't well-connected with her professional story, and Willebrand's encounters with Remus never quite seem to be very dramatic or interesting either. There's a lot of repeated material and a good deal of testimony from court cases that doesn't shed any additional light on the people or issues involved, and it ends up feeling like filler. A good developmental edit might have turned this into a better book, but as is, I can't recommend it.